BZRK: Reloaded (BZRK 2)

“I’m sorry,” Minako cried. “Whatever I did, I’m sorry, please let me go.”

Charles’s bifocal vision—his depth perception—dropped out. This was a common experience. The center eye, the shared eye, could link either to him or to Benjamin. It was always obvious to whom the third eye was linked at any moment, because when it was active it provided depth of field otherwise lacking.

KimKim lifted the syringe from its stainless steel cradle. “I don’t know how to give anyone a shot,” he said nervously. Then added, “Sir.” Then amended, “Sirs.”

“It’s not really a needle,” Charles explained. “There’s no sharp tip, you see. You just need to place it very close to Minako’s eye and squeeze the plunger very carefully.”

“You cannot do this,” said Minako. “Please. Please, please.”

“Young lady, there is nothing to be afraid of,” Charles said, working on his best friendly voice.

“Who’s to stop us?” Benjamin snapped.

“You should understand that we are doing this to make you happy, Minako. Think of it …think of it as if there was a disease in your brain and we are going to cure you. When we are done you will feel happier. You’ll find that you—”

“I see!” Benjamin cried. “I can see through their eyes! I’m seeing through the nanobot eyes! Hah!”

KimKim carefully placed the tip of the needle—it might not be sharp, but it certainly looked like a needle—as close as he could to Minako’s eyelid. She squeezed her eyes shut and yelled, “Someone help me! Help!”

KimKim pulled back. “If you don’t sit still I’m going to poke you!”

“I can see through all their sensors, oh, oh!” Benjamin said. “I see all the other, all my …all the nanobots, we’re all jumbled together, oh!”

KimKim used two fingers to pry Minako’s eyelid open and quickly pushed the plunger.

“Ah!” Benjamin cried. “Like a roller coaster.”

“Now me, now me, the second syringe!” Charles ordered. “In the other eye!”

KimKim raced for the second syringe and now Minako was sobbing on the edge of hysteria. She started babbling numbers. “One, two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen.”

“What is she doing?” Charles demanded, distractedly.

“Prime numbers, you dolt,” Benjamin snarled.

“Nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine, thirty-one.”

Charles tried to ignore his brother’s condescension—Benjamin had always been better at math—and focused instead on the virtual control panel that appeared in the screen the helmet projected—lopsidedly—onto his eye. His fingers twitched in the gloves. The interface was a virtual touchscreen. He searched for the button labeled, Register.

He pushed it by barely moving his index finger. A second prompt opened up. Did he want to register nanobot package six? Yes, he did.

And then, “Ah!”

It was startling, though he’d seen it many times on video. All at once he was looking through six sets of sensors. It was hard to make sense of what he was seeing. A tangle of mechanical legs and sensor arrays and immobile wheels. The nanobots were not neatly stacked but rather tangled in a ball.

KimKim hit the plunger and the nanobots all exploded down a steel pipe and landed in a spare splash of liquid in Minako’s eye.

“Thirty-seven, forty-one, forty-three, forty-seven!”

The visuals were too much, too overwhelming, too many eyes looking in too many directions. What was it Bug Man did when he had too many nanobots to control individually? Platooning. And there was the prompt in the form of a question: Platoon?

Charles said, “Yes,” then realized this was not a voice-activated control. He drew a finger around the six nanobot avatars and touched the Platoon? prompt.

The nanobots moved automatically into a formation, two lines of three.

Sudden darkness.